Gates are often used to allow selective access through a wall or fence. Conventionally, gates are constructed as follows. Two vertical support members and two horizontal support members are fastened together in a rectangular shape to form what will be referred to herein as a gate box. Fence boards or the like are fastened to the support members, and one of the vertical support members is rotatably attached by two or more hinge assemblies to a structural member such as a wall or post.
Using conventional gate building techniques, fasteners such as nails or screws are driven through one support member into another support member to form the corners of the gate box. Over time, the force of gravity and wood shrinkage will cause these fasteners to loosen, allowing the gate box to sag out of its desired rectangular shape.
Accordingly, metal L-brackets, wooden brace members, triangular pieces of plywood, and the like are often fastened to the adjacent ends of the support members to strengthen the inside corners of the gate box. In other situations, a wire is placed in tension between the upper proximal and lower distal corners of the gate box to support the lower distal corner of the gate box and thereby reduce sagging of the gate. Such bracing techniques are somewhat effective but also commonly employ fasteners that are susceptible to failure and can be relatively time consuming to implement.
Another problem with conventional gate building techniques is that fasteners such as nails or screws are similarly used to attach the hinge assemblies to the vertical support member adjacent to the structural member. The loads are transferred to the gate through the screws placed in tension. As the wood shrinks and the gate is opened and closed, the fasteners under tension tend to loosen and may eventually fail.
As the hinge fasteners loosen, the entire gate assembly may sag relative to the hinge assemblies and thus the structural member, even if the gate box maintains its rectangular shape. The use of braces at the corners of the gate box will worsen sagging at the hinges because the materials and hardware used for bracing increase the weight of the gate; this increased weight increases the forces of gravity on the fasteners used to attach the hinge assemblies to the proximal vertical support member.
The Applicant is aware of a product sold in Canada as early as approximately 1993 under the tradename “Artistic Steel Gate Frames”. The Artistic Steel Gate Frame product comprises distal and proximal brace members, with hinges being attached to the proximal brace member. A gate assembly constructed using the Artistic product would use upper and lower horizontal wooden support members, but would not use vertical support members. Instead, the distal and proximal brace members would form the structure of the vertical sides of the gate. Accordingly, the brace members of the Artistic product were sold in a plurality of sizes, with each size corresponding to a given distance between the upper and lower horizontal support members.
One problem with the Artistic product is that this system requires the manufacturer to produce and keep in inventory, and the retailer to stock, multiple sizes of brace members.
In addition, the end user is limited to one of these multiple sizes of brace members; one could not create a gate assembly having a custom distance between the upper and lower horizontal support members.
From the foregoing, it should be clear that one object of the present invention is to create bracket systems and methods that are strong, that are easy and inexpensive to use, and which allow significant flexibility in the final design of the gate assembly.